Method of customizing a fault tree for an appliance

Abstract

A method is provided of customizing a fault tree for diagnosing a fault in an appliance configured to perform a cycle of operation on an article. The appliance must also be configured to communicate by electronic message. The method includes providing a plurality of fault trees associated with appliances and appliance components, where the fault trees include an ordered collection of steps. The method continues with communicating with an appliance by electronic message to obtain information about components associated with the appliance, selecting a subset of the plurality of fault trees based on the information, and dynamically aggregating the subset to create a customized fault tree comprising an ordered collection of steps.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.